


Names

by prepare4trouble



Category: Red Dwarf (UK TV)
Genre: M/M, Marriage Proposal, Name Changes, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:13:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25149022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prepare4trouble/pseuds/prepare4trouble
Summary: “Guys, you’re missing the point. All we’re doing is trying to figure out what we should be called. You know, theoretically.Ifwe got married. Rimmer thinks one of us needs to change our name, but I don’t want to be a Rimmer and he doesn’t want to be a Lister."Rimmer and Lister have a disagreement about names.
Relationships: Dave Lister/Arnold Rimmer
Comments: 23
Kudos: 63





	1. Chapter 1

“David Rimmer,” Rimmer said loudly. He took a deep breath and stood very still, as though savouring the sound of the name, and nodded in satisfaction. “Got a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

Lister, lounging on his bunk, plucking at the muted strings of his guitar, frowned. “You what? What are you doing, Rimmer, trying to come up with baby names? I think three million years after you died is probably a bit late to start planning a family, to be honest.”

Rimmer scowled. “Thank you for that,” he said. “No, actually. Remember the other day you said we were practically married?”

Lister nodded. “Yeah, so?”

“Well, it got me thinking. If we _did_ get married, you’d take my name, and I was just wondering how it would sound.”

Lister carefully put down his guitar on the bunk next to him and looked at Rimmer, trying to work out whether or not he was serious. He _looked_ serious. Or at least, he didn’t look like he was joking. Of course, this was Rimmer, he didn’t tend to spend a lot of time joking around. “I’d take your name?” he repeated. “Rimmer, what the smeg makes you think I’d do a crazy thing like that?”

Rimmer tugged at his uniform top to straighten it, and glanced at his reflection in the mirror. “Well, I mean, _one_ of us would have to do it, wouldn’t we? And if you think for a second that I’m going to change my last name to _Lister_ …”

“Hang on,” Lister said. He sat up in the bunk and brushed an avalanche of crumbs from his shirt with the back of his hand. “First off, what’s wrong with being called Lister? Second off, you do know that getting married doesn’t mean someone _has_ to change their name, right?” Third, nobody had mentioned them actually getting married, but he decided that wasn’t relevant to the conversation. After all, he wasn’t exactly _adverse_ to the idea. 

“What’s wrong with being called Lister, Lister, is that it’s _your_ name. It would just be too confusing. Besides, it will forever be associated in my mind with curry and lager, a slovenly appearance and terrible hygiene.”

“Hey!” said Lister. “Anyway, it’d be just as confusing if _I_ had to change my name.”

“Yes, but that would be confusing for _you_ , and no offence, but that doesn’t bother me quite as much.”

Lister rolled his eyes.

“And yes, I _do_ know that someone doesn’t have to change their name when they get married, but I’m a bit of a traditionalist. Not _totally_ of course. After all, I’m a hologram, and I’m talking about marrying a man. I know it’s all theoretical of course, but I still don’t think my family would have approved. Still at the very least, if you’re married I think you should have to have the same surname.”

Lister shook his head. “I don’t see why,” he said. “I mean, what’s the point?”

“Well, if a couple have children, what would they call them? Would they have to take _both_ parents’ names? And what about when _they_ grow up and get married? What if their significant others also have two names, then their kids are going to end up with four surnames. A couple of generations down the line you’ll end up with some poor sod who’s never managed to pass a single exam at school because by the time he’s finished writing his name at the top of the paper, he’s run out of time.”

Lister laughed. “That’s not how it works, Rimmer. You don’t just carry on accumulating names down the generations. Anyway _we’re_ not gonna have kids, are we? I mean, you’re a hologram and I’ve already given birth to twins. If you think I’m gonna do _that_ again you can smeg right off.”

Rimmer shook his head. “No, obviously I don’t think _we’re_ going to. I was just explaining why couples should have the same name. In our case, well… we’d do it because it’s traditional.”

Lister shook his head dismissively. “A lot of things are traditional, doesn’t mean they’re a good idea.”

“I just think that a married couple should have the same name,” Rimmer told him. “If you don’t want to be a Rimmer, maybe we could double barrel.”

“Dave Lister-Rimmer?” Lister shook his head and tried not to smirk.

“I was thinking “Rimmer-Lister, actually. It’s got a better ring to it.”

“Well you can stop thinking it. It’s not gonna happen, Rimmer.”

Rimmer folded his arms. “I don’t see why not. What have you got against it? It’s a good strong name, is Rimmer. It has a great family history attached to it.” He frowned thoughtfully. “I mean, it’s not _my_ family history, since I’m actually the son of Dungo Dennis the gardner, but still, a great history.”

“Yeah, see that’s what _I_ don’t get.” Lister told him. “I mean, it’s your name, I’m not saying it’s not, but you hated your family growing up. You had a miserable childhood, you actually divorced your parents when you were still a kid — and I _know_ it must’ve been bad for the courts to let you do that — then to top it all off you found out that the guy you’d thought was your father wasn’t. I mean, If I was you, instead of trying to inflict your name onto someone else, I’d probably be jumping at the chance to take a new one.”

“Whereas your parents were so great,” Rimmer responded sarcastically. “Abandoning you under a pool table in some Scouse boozer when you were a baby. Yes, I can see why you cling so fiercely to _your_ name.”

“Hey, it was _me_ that did that,” Lister reminded him. “And it’s not like I _wanted_ to. It was only because I didn’t have any other choice.” He thought of the baby, the much younger version of himself, that he had carefully placed into a box scrawled with a message he wouldn’t understand until three million years later, and left under the pool table. “You’re right, it _was_ a crappy thing to do, and don’t think it didn’t break my heart to give another kid away, but I didn’t have any choice. Kryten said I’d have created some kind of paradox if I hadn’t done it, that might have torn the universe apart.”

Even then, he had still been tempted to risk it.

Rimmer turned away. “That was insensitive. Sorry.”

“Anyway, Lister was my adoptive parents’ last name. The fact that it’s also my birth dad’s name’s just a coincidence, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Rimmer said. “Honestly, just thinking about your family situation gives me a headache.”

Lister shrugged. He felt the same way about Rimmer’s. Well, if you replaced ‘headache’ with ‘itchy feeling just under the skin and urge to hit people he had never met’. “Okay, how about this,” he suggested. “We could ask Cat and Kryten, see what they think.”

“About names?”

Lister nodded.

“Well, considering Cat doesn’t _have_ a name, and Kryten’s, well… Kryten, I think that’s a terrible idea. But since they’re all we’ve got, I suppose we don’t have a choice.”

“Great,” said Lister. He jumped down from the bunk and headed for the door. “C’mon then.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Sirs, you _do_ realise that you’re not actually married, don’t you?” Kryten told them.

Lister and Rimmer glanced at one another. “That’s not the point,” Rimmer told him.

Kryten nodded. “Of course not, sir. It’s just that even if you _wanted_ to get married, technically you wouldn’t be able to, so I really don’t see why you’re both getting so… so argumentative about it.”

Lister frowned. “Hang on, why wouldn’t we be able to?”

Kryten glanced from Lister to Rimmer and back again. “Well, for various reasons. One of which is that it isn’t legally permitted for holograms to marry.”

Lister hadn’t known that, actually, but he didn’t care. He glanced at Rimmer and shrugged. “Well, yeah, but that’s discrimination, isn’t it? We’re not into that round here, so we decided to ignore it. Anyway, we _know_ we’re not married, but we’re as good as, aren’t we?”

Kryten hesitated. “I suppose, looking at it from a certain point of view. But still, it _is_ the law. Or at least it _was_ the law, at the last point in history from which we encountered an updated guide to legal practises on the inhabited worlds of the solar system. None of them allowed deceased people to marry, therefore, legally you are not permitted to marry someone who is dead.”

Lister shuddered at that. “Don’t say it like that, Kryten. You make it sound like I tied the knot with a corpse or something. Just say hologram, okay?”

“Why should he?” Rimmer asked. “I _am_ dead, after all. If that makes you uncomfortable, maybe we need to apply for an annulment.”

“You can’t,” Cat interjected. “Didn’t you hear him? Nobody tied any knots with anybody.” He looked at Lister. “That’s a _good_ thing, by the way, imagine being tied to this guy for the rest of your life.” He indicated Rimmer with a wave of his hand and pulled a disgusted expression. “What would you do if you needed to visit the litter box?.”

Lister sighed. He was beginning to wish he hadn’t bothered. “Cat, there’s no actual tying of knots involved,” he said.

“Well, sometimes there is,” Rimmer corrected, with a sly smile.

Lister looked at him sharply.

In swift response to Lister’s reaction, Rimmer immediately sprung to his own defence. “Uh… I didn’t mean that how you might have taken it,” he said. He spoke far too quickly and a hint of a blush spread across his face. “I just meant some marriage ceremonies involve knot… Pagans! They tie knots I think.” He frowned. “Don’t they?”

Lister shrugged.

“Unless you’re into that kind of thing,” Rimmer continued. “Tying knots, I mean. Because if you _are_ , then maybe we could… I mean, just to try it out. I really don’t mind…”

Lister sighed and ran a hand over his face. He shot a glance at Rimmer that he hoped communicated that they could talk about _that_ later, then turned back to Cat and Kryten. “Guys, you’re missing the point,” he said. “All we’re doing is trying to figure out what we should be called. You know, theoretically. _If_ we got married. Rimmer thinks one of us needs to change our name, but I don’t want to be a Rimmer and he doesn’t want to be a Lister.

“That’s easy,” Cat told him. “Do away with them altogether. I never understood you monkeys with your name obsession anyway. And you don’t just have one, either. You gotta have _two_ of them. Goalpost Head even has _three_ , and now you’re thinking about swapping them around? What for? Dump them, problem solved.”

Rimmer shook his head. “No, you moronic moggy, that doesn’t solve anything.”

Cat shrugged. “Fine, you love your names so much, keep them. But why not squish them together?”

Rimmer frowned. “What?”

“You know, like…” Cat paused, frowning thoughtfully as he tried to puzzle out what he was trying to say. “Like Rimster, or Limmer, something like that.”

Lister shook his head.

“Not bad, actually,” Rimmer said, nodding appreciatively. “Not bad at all. We still keep elements of our names. It would have to be Rimster, obviously. Limmer just sounds ridiculous.”

“Rimmer, ‘Rimster’ sounds like…” Lister smirked. “Well, like something you wouldn’t want as a name.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” Lister shook his head again, “never mind. And yeah, I’m with you on Limmer, it’s terrible. But you know, depending how you do it, it’d be possible to combine our names together and get ‘Lister’ or ‘Rimmer’, so how about we do that? I’ll take Lister, you take Rimmer, problem solved.”

Rimmer shook his head. “Problem _not_ solved. The whole point was to have the _same_ name. Not the same names we already have.”

“Sirs, you haven’t even had a marriage ceremony,” Kryten said, continuing his train of thought from earlier in the conversation. “Some form of exchanging of vows is traditionally required in every single culture in order to seal a marriage.”

“Alright,” Lister said. “Let’s do that, then. You know the words for a wedding, right Kryten? If we just do it, _then_ will yo let us talk about this?”

Kryten hesitated.

Rimmer raised a finger. “Hang on a minute, Listy,” he said. “What kind of a proposal is that? Like I told you earlier, I consider myself a fairly traditional guy. If we’re going to get married, at least one of us should be getting down on one knee, holding a ring and popping the question. ‘Oi Kryten, you can marry us,’ just doesn't cut it for me, miladdo.”

“It’s a moot point anyway, sirs,” Kryten told them. “I _do_ know the words I would be required to say, but I’m not qualified to perform a marriage ceremony.”

“Does that really matter though?” Lister asked him. “I mean, it’s not like someone’s going to show up and arrest you, is it?”

“Well, probably not,” Kryten agreed, “But still, it seems wrong, somehow. Anyway, even if I _did_ agree, you would still need two witnesses, and you only have one.”

“They don’t even have that many,” Cat told them. “Ain't no way I’m accepting a wedding invitation without at _least_ a month to plan what I’m going to wear. What if there was some cute bridesmaid there and my badly planned outfit put her off?!”

“There’s not going to be any bridesmaids, you idiot,” Rimmer told him. “There’s not going to be any bride.”

“There’s not going to be any wedding,” Kryten added. “Although, if you _would_ like me to pretend to marry you, I would be willing, though it would be a purely symbolic act.”

Lister glanced at Rimmer. “What do you think?”

Rimmer shook his head. “Not until we sort out this name thing. And not without a proper proposal.”

“Well, I’m not changing my name to Rimmer, and I’m not changing it to smegging _Rimster_ either.”

Rimmer folded his arms defiantly. “Well I’m certainly not changing mine to Lister. I’m not going to let you win this.”

It always had to be about winning and losing with Rimmer, didn’t it? Lister sighed. “That settles that then, doesn’t it?”

Kryten stepped forward. “Sirs… If I might make a suggestion, if you are absolutely adamant about having the same name…”

“We’re not,” Lister interrupted.

“ _I_ am,” said Rimmer.

“Well, how about an entirely different name. Something unrelated to either of your existing names, that way there _are_ no winners or losers.”

Rimmer pulled a face. “And how would we come up with this name? Just pluck it out of the air, I suppose?”

“Well, there are ample numbers of worthy people throughout history whose name it would surely be an honour to take,” Kryten told him.

Lister frowned. Kryten was probably right, but the chances of them agreeing on one were practically zero. And even if they _did_ come up with a name they both liked, it didn’t change the fact that Lister didn’t _want_ to change his name. He didn’t even want _Rimmer_ to change his name. Things were fine as they were.

Cat grinned. “Hey, that’s a _great_ idea! Can I pick the name?”

Rimmer and Lister looked at each other and shook their heads simultaneously. “No,” they both said.

“We’d never agree anyway,” Rimmer said. “I’ve got an idea. A contest! The winner gets to pick the name.”

Lister folded his arms. “But you’d pick Rimmer,” he said.

“Yes, that’s the point. And I assume you’d pick Lister, ergo the winner of said contest gets to impose their name upon the other.”

Lister shook his head. “That’s stupid, Rimmer. I don’t _want_ to impose my name on you.”

“Yes,” said Rimmer, “But _I_ want to impose mine on _you_. So, what do you say? Settle it with a game of Risk?”

“No way. I don’t even know how to play that, and from hearing you go on about it, it sounds more boring than an evening listening to your hammond organ music collection.”

Rimmer nodded. “I know you can’t play. That’s why I picked it.”

“Yeah well, in that case, how about the one that can eat the hottest curry wins?”

“Absolutely not,” Rimmer told him. “I can’t stand spicy food.”

Lister grinned, “I know.”

Rimmer pressed his lips together thoughtfully. “Fine, fair enough. It needs to be something that we’re equally good, or equally bad at. Something that we both at least have a chance of winning at. How are you at chess?”

Lister shook his head. “Pool?”

“Backgammon?”

“Twister?”

“Poker?”

“Snakes and Ladders.”

Rimmer frowned. “Actually… that’s not a bad idea,” he said. “I mean, it’s down to pure chance, isn’t it? Who rolls the best numbers, who’s unlucky enough to land on the big snake right at the end… There’s no skill involved at all. So at least neither of us could claim that the other has an advantage.”

He wasn’t serious, was he? Lister looked Rimmer up and down, trying to decide. He _looked_ serious. He looked exactly like a man who was willing to bet his name away on what was essentially a game of chance. “Really?” he said.

Rimmer hesitated. He folded his arms and stared at Lister as though trying to decide the same thing about _him_. Finally, he nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Really. Unless you want to back out, of course.”

Lister considered it. He really _did_ want to back out, but he couldn’t. Not if Rimmer wasn’t going to. Not unless he wanted to be subjected to months of insults and snide comments about how he had chickened out., and he really didn’t want to have to put up with that. Anyway, he had as much chance as Rimmer did of winning. “This only counts if we actually get married,” he said. “Right?”

Rimmer nodded. “Only if,” he agreed.

“Fine. Snakes and Ladders. One game, no do-overs. Winner gets to pick our name.”

Cat grinned as he placed a hand on each of their shoulders. “Alright, great!” he said. “I love Snakes and Ladders. I get to be red, okay? And I already chose what name I’m gonna give you guys if I win!”

“Er, no…” Rimmer’s eyes widened in panic. “Cat, you don’t get to… Lister, tell him!”

Lister shook his head. “He’s right, Cat, it’s only me and Rimmer that… Wait, what name did you choose?”

“I’m not gonna tell _you_ guys,” Cat told them. “So, shall we play?”

Lister hesitated as an idea occurred to him. It was a gamble, but it might just work... “You know, Rimmer,” he said, “maybe we _should_ let him play. I mean, why not? It might be fun to have a mystery third option.”

Rimmer swallowed slowly. He walked across the room, turned, and walked back again. “Actually,” he said, “now that I think about it, maybe _you’re_ right, Lister. Maybe there _is_ something to be said for both of us keeping our original names. I mean, there’s much less paperwork, for a start. I think if we did get married, I’d be willing to forego that one tradition.”

“You sure?” Lister asked him.

Rimmer nodded. “Definitely. Just that one tradition though. All the rest, that would be non-negotiable.”

“The down on one knee stuff, and the ring and all that?”

Rimmer nodded.

“Okay then, problem solved.” Lister turned and headed for the door.

“Hey, where are you going?” Cat called after him. “Are you going to get the game?”

Lister shook his head. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, and headed in the direction of the crew lockers. All he needed now was a ring, and he knew just where to find one.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are loved and treasured ♥


End file.
